For brands, tailor shops and retailers
Custom suit factory: what you send, and what comes back
A custom suit factory is a production floor that cuts one garment at a time to one person's measurements, under whatever label you put in it. The work you are buying is not sewing. It is the handoff: 47 measurement fields, a cloth you can name by mill and bunch number, and a spec sheet with no blanks in it. Get that right and a suit takes 14 to 20 working days. Get one field wrong and it takes another three weeks and two more freight legs. We are Centi Sartoria, a Shanghai house of 200 tailors, and this page is the handoff written down.
- Minimum order
- One suit
- Not one style, one garment. Sample and production run on the same line.
- Lead time
- 14 to 20 working days
- From a confirmed order on cloth we hold. Ordered-in cloth adds the mill's own clock.
- Measurement fields
- 47
- 31 of them required. The other 16 change the fit more than most people expect.
- Style options
- 347
- Every one is a decision. Leave it blank and the floor decides for you.
- Cloth in the system
- 831
- 202 of those lengths sit in Shanghai. The rest are ordered against a confirmed job.
What you send a custom suit factory
Four things. Any factory that asks for fewer than these is guessing at one of them.
- 01
Measurements, all 47 fields
Our system carries 47 measurement fields, 31 of them required before an order will submit. Thirteen for the jacket (chest, waist, stomach, seat, shoulder, bicep, sleeve length, front and back length, neck, front chest, back chest, cuff), nine for the trouser, eleven for a waistcoat, twelve for a shirt. You send numbers, not a size.
A wrong chest reads as a bad jacket. A wrong back length reads as a bad tailor. Neither gets altered at your end: the garment comes apart and goes back through the line, which is roughly three more weeks and freight in both directions, and you explain the delay to a customer standing in your shop.
- 02
A cloth you can name
Not "navy wool." A mill, a bunch, a reference number. We buy from 26 European mills and we keep the bunch books, so "Vitale Barberis Canonico Four Seasons" resolves to a specific length with a specific weight. If your supplier cannot turn your cloth choice into a number that exists in a mill's own book, you do not know what you bought.
Cloth is the one line item your customer can feel and your competitor can price. A 280g four-season worsted is where a business suit belongs. Below 240g it creases by lunchtime, and I will not recommend it for a suit somebody wears to work, whatever the swatch looks like on a desk.
- 03
Your label, and where it goes
Woven main label, size label, care label, and the packaging you want it to arrive in. We sew what you send or produce it to your artwork. Nothing of ours goes inside the garment unless you ask for it.
This is the difference between owning a brand and reselling somebody else's. If a factory will only ship its own house label, you are a stockist, and your margin is whatever they leave you.
- 04
A spec sheet with no blanks
347 style options exist across suits and shirts: lapel width and shape, vent count, pocket type, button stance, lining, working cuffs, pick stitching, canvas type. A spec sheet is you choosing, in writing, before anything is cut.
Every blank is a decision the floor makes without you. Those defaults are reasonable and they are not yours, and you will not find out which ones were left blank until the box opens.
What comes back, and when
The clock does not start when you pay. It starts when the cloth is on the table.
Our figure is 14 to 20 working days from a confirmed order, and it holds on one condition: the cloth is already in Shanghai. We hold 202 lengths in the building, 162 Zegna and 40 Vitale Barberis Canonico. Everything else in the 831-piece system is ordered in against your confirmed job, which means the mill's own lead time stacks on top of ours before a single piece is cut. Nobody's quoted turnaround survives that, including ours, and a supplier who quotes you the same number for both is quoting you the one they hold and hoping you order it.
How to tell a custom suit factory from a trading company
Most of what calls itself a factory is an office that emails a factory. That is not automatically bad. Not knowing which one you are talking to is.
Ask for the mill reference on the order paperwork.
A real answer sounds like: A real production floor puts the mill name and bunch number on the documentation, because it had to order the cloth by that number.
Not an answer: "Italian fabric" and a photo of a swatch. Italian fabric is not a claim, it is an adjective. Anyone can type it.
Ask what they hold versus what they order in.
A real answer sounds like: A specific count of specific books. Ours is 162 Zegna and 40 VBC, and you can ask us to photograph a shelf.
Not an answer: "We have access to everything." Access is a supplier relationship, not stock, and it is measured in weeks.
Ask how many measurement fields the order form has.
A real answer sounds like: A number, and a form you can look at. Fields are the cheapest possible proof that the fit is actually made rather than sized.
Not an answer: Chest, waist, height, and a drop calculation. That is ready-to-wear with a tape measure in front of it.
Ask who signs off the fault when a garment comes back wrong.
A real answer sounds like: Anyone willing to write down, before you order, how fault, rework and freight get split.
Not an answer: A warm sentence about standing behind the work. Ask them to put the split in writing, and ask every supplier you are comparing to do the same. One who will not write it down has told you something.
None of those four questions are about us. Ask them of every supplier on your shortlist, including this one, and keep the answers side by side. The point is not that we win the comparison. The point is that a supplier who cannot answer in numbers has given you nothing to compare.
Minimum order: what "no minimum" is supposed to mean
Our minimum is one suit, and it means one garment, not one style in a run of fifty. The sample and the production piece go down the same line with the same 47 fields, so what you approve is what your customer receives. 200 house tailors, two to three garments each a day, is where the capacity to do that comes from, and you can multiply it out yourself.
A one-piece minimum is the right structure for a shop taking orders one customer at a time, and it is the wrong structure for someone who has not sold anything yet. If you do not have a customer, the factory is not your problem. Go and sell one suit you bought from somebody else, learn what the fitting conversation is actually like, and come back with a real order. We would rather turn that conversation down now than take a deposit for stock you will still own next year.
What a custom suit factory cannot do for you
Four things buyers regularly expect from production that production has never supplied.
It cannot measure your customer
The tape is in your shop, in your hands. Every fit problem that is not a construction fault started as a number somebody wrote down in a fitting room. A factory can hold the fields and flag an impossible combination. It cannot see the person.
It cannot make cloth arrive faster than the mill sends it
If a bunch is out of stock in Biella, it is out of stock in Shanghai too. Any supplier who tells you otherwise is either holding the cloth already and not saying so, or substituting a similar one and not telling you which.
It cannot give you a brand
It can put your label in, your artwork on the box, and keep its own name off every part of the garment. Everything after that, the customers, the fittings, the reason someone pays your price rather than a mall price, is yours to build.
It cannot be cheap and slow-considered at the same time
Something has to give. A full-canvas chest takes hours a fused one does not. If a price looks like a fused price and the page says full canvas, ask which of the two the invoice will be describing.
Common questions
What is a custom suit factory?
A custom suit factory is a production facility that cuts and makes suits one garment at a time to an individual customer's measurements, rather than to a standard size run. It works from a measurement set, a named cloth and a spec sheet supplied by the retailer or brand, and it sews the retailer's own label into the finished garment. Centi Sartoria is one: 200 tailors in Shanghai, a one-suit minimum, 14 to 20 working days on cloth held in the building.
What is the minimum order at a custom suit factory?
It varies enormously and it is the fastest way to sort suppliers. Volume factories set minimums in the hundreds per style because their economics come from a long cut. Made-to-measure operations run one at a time. Our minimum is one suit, which means one garment, not one style: the sample and the production piece run on the same line.
How long does a custom suit factory take?
Centi Sartoria is 14 to 20 working days from a confirmed order when the cloth is already in Shanghai, which covers the 202 lengths we hold. When the cloth has to be ordered from the mill, the mill's own lead time comes first and ours starts afterwards. Ask any supplier which of those two numbers they are quoting you before you promise a date to a customer.
How do I know a custom suit factory is not a trading company?
Ask for the mill name and bunch reference on the order documentation. A production floor had to buy the cloth by that number, so it can produce it. Then ask what they hold in stock versus what they order in, and ask for the count. Vague sourcing language such as Italian fabric is not verifiable and should not be treated as an answer.
Can a custom suit factory put my own label in?
A private-label or OEM producer will. Send woven main, size and care labels, or the artwork and we will produce them. Some factories only sell their own house product, in which case you are a stockist rather than a brand. Ask before you sample, because it changes what your business is.
Who makes custom suits in China?
The market splits into three. Volume factories cut long runs at high minimums for large wholesale programmes. Made-to-measure houses, including Centi Sartoria, cut single garments to individual measurements for retailers and brands. Trading companies sit in between and place your order with one of the other two. All three are legitimate. Knowing which one you are talking to determines your minimum, your lead time and who answers when something is wrong.
Send us one order and check the arithmetic
One suit, your label, your customer's 47 numbers. If any figure on this page does not survive contact with the garment that arrives, you will have found that out for the price of a single piece.